In Which I Take Back Many Things I've Said About John Howard
I’ve never read anything like this speech of the Prime Minister’s. I still think he’s an arsehole with legs, but having read it—and decided that it might just be genuine and not an elaborate Internet hoax—I’m willing to believe that he’s an arsehole with legs and a human conscience.
…These are the facts. There are many more examples. And they raise serious concerns for the future predicament which our Government and our party may find ourselves facing. We have been lucky up to this point, because the full extent of the mayhem resulting from our U.N sanctioned occupation has not been dwelt upon by the Australian media. You can draw your own conclusions why this is so. However, having been kept well briefed on the conflict by our intelligence agencies, and I can assure you that many unpleasant details are still to emerge.
Read it in full and tell me if you don’t find your image of the Prime Minister changed.
In the matter of our own citizen, David Hicks, who remains to this day Guantanamo Bay, often in solitary isolation, it is becoming increasing difficult to distinguish his predicament from that which would have faced a prisoner of Saddam Hussein. I believe the Department of Foreign Affairs has been remiss in accepting the assurances of some US officials at face value.
UPDATE: Hoaxed, stupidly and credulously. Please take this opportunity to mock one of your hosts.
Phil (not verified) wrote:
It ain’t April 1st yet is it?
Flashman (not verified) wrote:
I call shenanigans - careful, Liam, I’m looking at this one very closely and the pieces don’t stack up.
There’s probably more, but this is enough for me to seriously question the site’s veracity. If it’s not a fake, then our PM should hire better web designers.
liam wrote:
pwned
liam wrote:
OK, I now restate all of the things I’ve ever said about the little fucker. Squared, and preferably inserted sideways.
Thank you flashman for exposing my total credulity.
Flashman (not verified) wrote:
Blogged in full. I’ll keep adding more reasons as they occur to me. The question is, who’s responsible? Someone’s gone to significant trouble to put this site together - bought the domain and hosting, written the speech, cobbled together a copy of the PM’s genuine site.
It’s a genuine effort to put words in the PM’s mouth, for whatever reasons. So, who? Place your bets.
liam wrote:
It wasn’t very harsh. I was gulled mostly because they had the PM’s speech patterns and mannerisms so perfectly, as well as his ability to admit he was wrong without ever so much as admitting he was wrong.
Robert C (not verified) wrote:
Today’s Crikey explains that it was put up by Richard Neville.
EvilPundit wrote:
Registrant Name:R Neville
Funny how some lefties just need to lie, because they can’t convince anyone with truthful arguments.
What a stupid stunt.
dibo wrote:
i think it was more a ploy to show up the prime minister for the self-serving mendacious bastard he is - how nice would it be to have a prime minister who shows humility, takes a rap over the knuckles and tries to look for a way forward.
instead we have a stonewalling grump who would sell off a thousand lives to avoid having to say “i was wrong”.
Minotaur wrote:
And now it’s gone.
Culture jamming or stunt? It’s certainly fits in well with Neville’s former job as editor of Oz Magazine. Either way, Yahoo’s reaction is rather alarming …
dibo wrote:
satire cannot be tolerated. ignorance is strength.
EvilPundit wrote:
More like copyright violation and domain name fraud than satire in my opinion.
dibo wrote:
it’s simply satire. if howard wants to sue him for defamation then i guess he can, assuming of course he’s willing to go to the stand and say why the ‘speech’ damaged his standing, making people think he’s a war criminal and liar and get others to do the same.
domain name fraud? did mr neville attempt to gain a benefit by deception? no. he gave his real name, which was accessible when you checked the domain’s origin. it was clearly not a government website (no .gov in the domain), it was an imitation. it even had typos in the text. it had links in the text like a blog post. what copyright? i spose the same amount of copyright that the ALP could have asserted over their logo when the libs put out their ‘labor watch’ website during the last election campaign?
are people going to be banned from imitating john howard’s voice next? drawing cartoons about john howard? referring to john howard without prefacing it with ‘the prime minister’ and ban people from saying ‘little johnny’ in reference to him? will jokes about eyebrows and matching tracksuits become taboo?
quit being so oversensitive about some bloody satire. the freedom to do stuff like that and not wind up in all sorts of hot water is what separates us from repressive regimes like the former hussein regime.
EvilPundit wrote:
Oh, bollocks. Satire doesn’t attempt to pass itself off as the real thing, which Neville’s site did. If he had clearly marked it as a fake, then Liam and others wouldn’t have been taken in. It was obviously meant to deceive.
And copying the PM’s site was a violation of copyright, itself a sufficient reason for a ban. A well-done satire would have created its own page design without stealing the government’s copyrighted material.
Any way you cut it, the site was intentionally misleading, in breach of copyright, and in violation of the provider’s terms of service. Richard Neville has no leg to stand on.
liam wrote:
I tend to agree with Evil, dibo, though perhaps it’s only my bitterness.
Neville would have been entirely within his rights on the morning of the first of April.
dibo wrote:
“Satire doesn’t attempt to pass itself off as the real thing, which Neville’s site did.”
it’s like a prank call, it would have no effect if you rang up and said “i’m not really from the lottery office, but just pretend i am for 5 minutes”.
it was making the point that things could be so different.
we could have a prime minister who cares about the consequences of his actions/inaction.
we could have a prime minister who says sorry when he’s done the wrong thing.
we could have a prime minister who is strong enough to say when he got it wrong.
we don’t. that point has been made with resounding clarity.
this point wouldn’t have been anywhere near so strongly made had there been a huge banner at the top saying ‘hur hur, i’m not really the pm, imagine if i was and said this!…’
that liam got taken in is simply a sign that he wanted to believe it was true. he wants, as i do, a pm who actually gives a shit about the consequences of his actions and is willing to be held to public account for them.
and somehow this hopeful (but mistaken) impression is proof that richard neville’s done the wrong thing? it’s the PM who should be slammed for not having the guts to make a speech that lays it out, bare and true, like neville’s satire did.
ekb87 (not verified) wrote:
Contrast the reaction of lefties to this fraud, and their outrage over what ‘The Chaser’ did to Michael Leunig…
The hypocrisy is amazing.
liam wrote:
Actually ekb87, I think you’ll find that most of us thought that stunt was pretty funny. Michael Leunig isn’t just the Right’s punching bag, you know.
dibo wrote:
can’t say i was outraged beyond belief, and it didn’t even rate a mention here at Stoush.net, so must have been care factor 0
Myth wrote:
Even Nixon had his moments. I do not understand how, if in any way, it would change your opinion of John Howard anyway? Would you judge someone not on their actions, their reasons, and what these things constitute as a whole, but instead on how they feel about something in a very vague way.
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